Fookin’ hell, it’s actually happening. Bludfest, the inaugural one-day music festival created by YUNGBLUD, has taken over the enormous Milton Keynes Bowl. The venue that has hosted the likes of Bon Jovi, David Bowie, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Muse and Green Day is once again the home of the historical.
“Rock is different. It’s got a new energy to it, whether people like it or not,” the man behind it all, YUNGBLUD, tells Kerrang! backstage. “The way it survives, thrives, prospers and gets bigger is if we all stick together.”
Dressed in all black and with smudged kohl pencil decorating his eyes, the 27-year-old is no different away from the stage than he is on it. His Doncaster accent drips from every vowel, and he takes as he finds. Buzzing about the private guest area, where Coachella-like brown tenting and bunting hang above couches and tables, we watch as Dom dishes out hugs and handshakes, urging everyone to “get out there” and “have the best fookin’ time”.
“There’s been a lot of division in rock music. It feels spherical again,” he tells us in between the madness. We stand before a wall of tour posters featuring today’s acts NOAHFINNCE, Nessa Barrett and fittingly, himself. “It’s coming at all angles: hardcore, punk, metal, fuckin’ pop-rock, pop-punk. It’s fuckin’ sick!”
Dom has been quite the ringleader of this new generation. Since the arrival of his debut album, 2018’s 21st Century Liability, the ever-burgeoning Black Heart Club fandom has been mirroring back all that he projects in his music – that it’s okay to not conform, to be as bold as you like in your own expression of gender, to be good to people.
As part of his mission, Dom created Bludfest to make the festival experience available to those who would not normally be able to afford it. Ticket prices started at just £49.50, a bargain compared to other, more established fests. And yet, he’s still paid all artists involved fairly.
“When you just turn up and play a gig, you don’t realise what money goes where,” he explains. “If I own my own thing, I can see things literally spread out. I’ll make money in other places, but it was a very big point for me to only break-even on the music and pay the artists what they should be paid.
“I don’t want to ask someone, ‘This is a good cause, will you come and do it for a little bit less?’” he continues. “I was like, ‘What’s your fee?’” I wanted to show it can be done this way. I really don’t mind putting my head above the trench and getting shot at first.”